French Bus company BlaBlaCar now offers train tickets on its website and app in addition to its bus and carpool offers. The service is in direct competition with SNCF Connect, the official booking platform of French railroads SNCF, and Trainline, an independent, commercial ticket seller offering tickets from multiple rail companies in Europe, including SNCF.
“This is the last missing link to become the one-stop shop for long-distance travel,” says the company’s European managing director, Adrien Tahon, alluding to BlaBlaCar’s five million active users. “This will allow us to bring car-sharing to the same level as other means of transportation.”
Boost sales
So, in addition to bus and carpool trips, BlaBlaCar’s website and app now also let you compare train trips departing from the 350 main French stations. This mainly concerns the TGV Inoui, TER (regional trains), and the trains of the Spanish company Renfe. The other stations and round-trip tickets, discount tickets, or Trenitalia offers will be added in the coming months.
The SNCF Connect app – the railroad company is a shareholder in BlaBlaCar – compares train travel to bus and car sharing but refers customers to the BlaBlaCar app for carpool travel.
Offer also in Spain, Germany, and Italy
In the short term, Adrien Tahon does not immediately see offering the train as a source of profitability, given the costs incurred and the limited commission of 2% on the tickets, although “it will boost sales.” BlaBlaCar customers currently book an average of 13 train trips a year, through other sites, and more than a third have already made trips combining train and carpooling.
The company has been testing this global offer for two years in Spain, where it is possible to compare the offers of the different operators that have benefited from the liberalization of rail (with the private high-speed rail operator Iryo or Avlo, a low-cost high-speed rail service operated by the Spanish national rail company Renfe).
BlaBlaCar, best known as a carpool service but which bought bus company Ouibus from SNCF in 2018, plans to extend this offer to Germany and Italy in the medium term. There are currently no plans for Belgium, where the company also serves stops.
It is also currently testing out BlaBlaCar Zen, a door-to-door carpooling service offered by BlaBlaCar designed for short-distance trips, typically within a few kilometers of a user’s origin and destination.
It differs from traditional BlaBlaCar carpooling in that passengers request a ride to a specific address rather than a general meeting point. Drivers can offer their routes and accept requests that match their travel plans, such as passing by a train station for extra money.
